UNITEC
Institute of Technology
Assignment 2
Referring to the course 06.810 Enterprise Networks and Management
Semester Two 2000

Network Management Protocols 
And Tools Study

Name:

 Thomas Kramer

Address: 23 McDonald Street, Morningside, Auckland
Handed in to: Hira Sathu
Deadline: 8th December 2000

Table of contents

1 NETWORK MANAGEMENT PROTOCOLS ... 1
1.1 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ... 1
1.2 PURPOSE AND SCOPE OF SMNP AND CMIP ... 2
1.2.1 SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol ... 2
1.2.1.1 SNMP at a glance ... 2
1.2.1.1.1 History of the network management protocol ... 2
1.2.1.1.2 About the protocol ... 3
1.2.1.2 SNMP Architecture ... 4
1.2.2 CMIP (Common Management Information Protocol ... 6
1.2.2.1 CMIP at a glance ... 6
1.2.2.2 CMIP architecture ... 7
1.3 SNMP VERSUS CMIP - COMPARISON ... 9
1.3.1 Management Information System ... 9
1.3.1.1 MIB Structure ... 9
1.3.1.1.1 SNMP MIB ... 9
1.3.1.1.2 CMIP MIB ... 10
1.3.1.2 Object Naming ... 10
1.3.1.3 Syntax ... 11
1.3.1.4 Structure of Management Information ... 11
1.3.1.5 Feature Comparison ... 11
1.3.2 Management Access Model ... 12
1.3.3 Scalability ... 13
1.3.4 Performance ... .14
1.3.5 Reliability ... 14
1.3.6 Security ... 15
1.4 ASSESSMENT OF THE IMPACT OF THE MIDDLEWARE ... 17
1.4.1 CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture) ... 18
1.4.2 DCOM (Distributed Component Object Model) ... 21

2 CRITIQUE OF VARIOUS NETWORK MANAGEMENT TOOLS ... 23
2.1 SELECTION OF SUITABLE NETWORK MANAGEMENT PRODUCTS ... 23
2.1.1 Network Management Tools ... 23
2.1.1.1 Diagnostic Tools ... 23
2.1.1.2 Monitoring Tools ... 24
2.1.1.3 Management Tools ... 25
2.1.2 Network Management Solutions ... 26
2.1.2.1 Novell ManageWise ... 27
2.1.2.2 Hewlett Packard OpenView ... 27
2.1.2.3 IBM (Tivoli) NetView ... 27
2.2 MANAGEMENT INFORMATION BASE (MIB) ... 29
2.3 EVALUATION OF COMMERCIAL TOOLS FOR NETWORK MANAGEMENT ... 31
2.3.1 Sniffer ... 31
2.3.2 Ping ... 31
2.3.3 Traceroute ... 32
2.3.4 Multi Router Traffic Grapher (MRTG) ... 33
2.3.5 Fluke LANMeter ... 34

3 REFERENCES ... 36

1 Network Management Protocols

1.1 Executive Summary

The report covers the evaluation of the network management protocols SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) and CMIP (Common Management Information Protocol). The history of the network management protocol is explained in the beginning to set the base for an understanding of the need for efficient network management protocols, which carry management information in their payload. The description and thorough comparison of the two protocols reveal several highlights: SNMP and CMIP are designed with different backgrounds and purposes. SNMP is appreciated due to its simplicity and ease of implementation and criticized for its lack of security issues and overall performance. CMIP was designed to overcome the shortcomings of SNMP and to outweigh it in every field. This aim has been achieved but what renders the protocol useless is the fact that it requires too much network resources. SNMP remains the network management protocol of choice.

After the presentation of the two protocols the attention is drawn to the impact of middleware on the management processes. Middleware can be considered as a layer of software that supports multiple communication protocols, multiple programming languages, and runs on various computer platforms. It helps to integrate otherwise incompatible system components by providing standardized mechanisms that distributed components can use to communicate over a network. With middleware the best of both worlds (SNMP versus CMIP) can be achieved. The most important middleware technologies are the Distributed Component Object Model (DCOM) and the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA). Although middleware eats up network resources significantly, it adds value to the corporative network due to its high performance and standardized interfaces that enable managers to employ network devices with the focus on the gained benefit rather than on their potential integration in the current network environment. One can see that network management, supported by middleware, moves towards the coverage of all layers in the OSI reference model.

1.2 Purpose and Scope of SMNP and CMIP

This part of the report will describe the two main major network management protocols in detail. Each protocol will be analysed separately focussing on their overall concept and architecture.

1.2.1 SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol)
1.2.1.1 SNMP at a glance
1.2.1.1.1 History of the network management protocol

With the declaration in 1983 of the Ministry Of Defence that TCP/IP should be the new standard Internet protocol, the ARPANET died and was replaced through the Internet. The Internet grew rapidly without having any management control standard. Therefore developers tried to build up a network management model. The earliest one was das High-Level Entity Management System (HEMS), however it did not find its use on the Internet. (Klein[1], 1999; Selegran, 1999)
In 1987 the Open Systems Interconnection group (OSI) presented a new model that was called CMIP (Common Management Information Protocol). It could only be used for OSI-based networks; therefore it was replaced by CMOT (CMIP over TCP), which has been declared as the new network management protocol standard. However, CMOT was not widely used.

In 1987 a group of network developers introduced a new protocol, SGMP (Simple Gateway Management Protocol). Its architecture was simple and it could be integrated seamlessly into an existing network. It found acceptance relatively fast. (Klein[1], 1999; Selegran, 1999)
In 1988 the ten Internet Activity Boards (IAB) met and discussed which of the three protocols should be used for the Internet. As a result, CMOT was considered to be the optimal solution for a network management protocol, whereas SGMP was the suggested short-term solution due to its wide acceptance. HEMS was dropped. Therefore it was necessary to develop an Internet Management Framework as an interim solution for systems to move from SMGP to CMOT protocols. This framework was called SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol). (Klein[1], 1999; Pras, 1995; Selegran, 1999) In April 1989 the IAB recommended SNMP to be the new standard for the TCP Internet Management Framework. At that time problems and disagreements occurred based on many details of this Internet Management Framework between CMOT- and SNMP- associations. Therefore it was decided by the IAB to give up the idea of a joint framework management and to start the further development of both frameworks instead. (Klein, 1999[1])
In 1990 the SNMP convinced IAB to recommend their protocol as the standard protocol worldwide. (Klein, 1999[1]; Selegran, 1999)

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